""We believe that the current international agricultural system, with its use of pesticides and chemicals is not contributing to the welfare of anybody, especially the farmers, and is actually contributing quite a bit to global climate change," Vandermeer said in an announcement from the university. "We take the position that in order to incorporate the rules of ecology into the development of new forms of agriculture, we need to understand what those rules are and how those rules work.""
"They found that the predator-prey interactions were so complex that predicting which of the four insect species will dominate at any given time becomes nearly impossible. This chaos is fueled by what the researchers described as "intransitive loop cyclic behavior," which is essentially a biological version of rock-paper-scissors where Ant A dominates Ant B, Ant B dominates Ant C but Ant C can dominate Ant A. The interactions were even more chaotic when the predator fly was added to the mix."
Predator-prey interactions among three ant species and a predatory fly on Puerto Rican coffee farms are highly complex and unpredictable. Intransitive loop cyclic behavior creates rock-paper-scissors dynamics where each ant can dominate another but be dominated by a different one. Adding a predator fly increases chaos and makes forecasting which insect will dominate nearly impossible. Chaotic insect dynamics complicate environmental pest control strategies like promoting specific ant predators. Use of pesticides and chemicals undermines farmer welfare and contributes to global climate change, suggesting a need to incorporate ecological rules into new agricultural approaches.
Read at Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine
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